■ Communications
NCC candidate withdraws
Lu Chung-chin (呂忠津), a professor from National Tsinghua University in Hsinchu withdrew his name from consideration on Tuesday, two days after he was recommended by a panel to the Executive Yuan as one of 13 candidates to serve on the National Communications Commission (NCC). In a letter to Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), Lu said he regretted that several political parties had packed the list of NCC nominees with their supporters. An Executive Yuan official said the premier has not decided whether to ask the panel charged with choosing candidates for the NCC to name another person. In the wake of Lu's statement, DPP caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) yesterday condemned the pan-blue camp for dictating the NCC selection process. Lai yesterday asked pan-blue review committee members to apologize to Lu and let the independent body do its job.
■ Crime
Nigerian held on rape charge
A Nigerian man by the name of Aduaka Bona Chukwuma, 31, was arrested in Taoyuan County on Tuesday night on suspicion of raping a college student and was charged with sexual assault. Police said Chukwuma entered Taiwan on Aug. 13 using a tourist visa. On Aug.21 Chukwuma met a college student on the street and obtained her cell phone number by offering her free English lessons. According to the police, Chukwuma then phoned the girl several times and invited her out to dinner, but she declined. On Oct. 1 the girl called Chukwuma and asked him for an English lesson. Police said Chukwuma then took the girl to a hotel in Taipei and after they had some alcohol, Chukwuma allegedly raped the girl. The girl escaped from the hotel while Chukwuma was showering and immediately reported the matter to the police with her family.
■ China Affairs
KMT files complaint
The Mainland Affairs Council yesterday confirmed that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has filed a complaint about the rejection of Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), China's top Taiwan affairs official, application to visit Taiwan, in a bid to ask the government to review Chen's rejected request. Council Vice Chairman Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said the KMT filed the complaint to the Ministry of Interior, and that the council would deal with the case in accordance with normal procedure. Chen had accepted the KMT's invitation to lead a 61-member delegation of Chinese officials from the Taiwan Affairs Office. Howver, the government rejected the delegation's application on the grounds that the Chinese government had been unwilling to negotiate with Taiwan on the group's visit schedule.
■ Health
Group urges disabled review
The League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled yesterday urged the Department of Health to include facilities for the mentally and physically disabled in their evaluations of care provided by hospitals, saying that a lack of such facilities was a threat to patient safety. Eva Teng (騰西華), General Secretary of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of the ROC, Taiwan, said, "The current focus of patient safety is on the process of medical treatment, but a ramp which is too steep can also cause accidents." Secretary General of the League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled Shieh Tung-ru (謝東儒) urged hospitals to make more provisions for an obstacle-free environment, saying this was especially important.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching